


Remiel

by The_Exile



Category: Star Ocean: The Second Story | Second Evolution
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4099918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where Rena was one of the Ten Wise Men before she was sent to Expel. When Chisato uncovers Rena's true origin during the investigation of the Symbological Weapons Laboratory, Rena is shocked and worried about the safety of the rest of the party, until an attempt to find out more about her past from Filia accidentally removes Gabriel's limiter and she is the only person who can save her friends.</p><p>art: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4182972</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In her dreams, she still saw the moment just before the Psynard attacked. 

By the time it attacked her, she had been expecting it, and it was just one more in a long list of dangerous animals that had tried to murder her so far today. It had been that instant the Psynard's eyes glowed red and lost any trace of a soul, when its visage twisted into berserk snarling hatred, that was forever seared into her memory. No, it was something more insane than hatred, something too inhuman for insanity, an obsessive mechanical desire to destroy. Not just to destroy, either, but to annihilate the one specific thing it was programmed to know the existence of.

They had been glaring right at her, those eyes with the murderous intensity of a rifle's laser sights. 

Two seconds ago, the creature had known nothing of the Universe. It had drifted, with all the awareness of a machine on standby, in a glass tank where it had been genetically engineered, grown for a single purpose, awaiting the day when its consciousness would be fully programmed with the knowledge of the Nedian it was bred to serve as a mount, a security guard and a lifelong companion. Noel had explained to Rena that a Psynard's life in the wild wasn't all that different - they lived in strict hierarchies decided by battles for dominance, and were peaceful unless threatened or their territory invaded - and that a Psynard in distress would have made their pain clear through their natural empathic psychic abilities.

A Psynard certainly wouldn't just throw itself at someone and try to murder them, unless something went very wrong with their genetic programming. The scientists in the facility had warned Energy Nede's alien visitors that it was a complete unknown whether a Psynard could even be bonded with a non-Nedian humanoid, and that the effects couldn't be predicted. They had been warned that there was a small chance that the Psynard might grow violent, as well as a chance that it might be injured by the process, or even that the process itself might injure the ones bonding with the Psynard, or any number of other possible side-effects, including ones that the scientists hadn't actually thought up yet. 

But it hadn't been Claude, the human from a planet called Earth, who triggered the violent reaction in the Psynard. It had been her, Rena, the Nedian. She had overheard Noel commenting to the Facility's Director about it, angrily demanding an explanation, when he thought Chisato was still dragging the rest of the party around her family's item shop. Rena had spotted him sneaking away from the group towards the Facility and had guessed what he was up to, so she followed him. She didn't really need to spy on anyone to learn the truth, though, she mostly wanted to hear it out loud. Somehow, that made it official, cemented the truth in her mind. 

Really, she had known the truth the moment she looked into the eyes of that deranged, broken creature, those eyes that brought out pity in her, bitter remorse at what she had inadvertently done to this innocent, new creation, even as it terrified her. It was empathic, after all, and despite the malfunction, it was still keyed to her. She still understood its thoughts almost as clearly as she understood her own.

The Psynard had been reacting to something it had been told, at the most fundamental level of its consciousness, the base programming that went into a Psynard before it was even taught the identity of its owner, was so utterly anathemical to everything on Nede that it must be destroyed at all costs. All the threats that it was capable of imagining - fires, floods, enormous predators that ate baby Psynards - were all subsumed in comparison to the evil in front of it. 

It had been thinking about Rena. 

She had never told Noel what she remembered of the experience, and he had never admitted that he had spoken to the Director about her. She hadn't been able to keep up with the conversation between the two scientists, what with the combination of technical jargon and the difficulties of hearing someone from a distance while hiding her presence. However, she did understand that they didn't really know what had happened either. In the end, Noel talked the Director into checking the equipment for faults and testing the latest Psynard batch for mutations. The facility's head complained that the equipment was already double-checked every day before anyone was allowed to use it, and then blamed the whole mess on the Ten Wise Men (an excuse Rena knew from experience was a catch-all explanation for anything and everything that was wrong on Energy Nede, up to and including the socks that went missing in the wash, when the people making the excuses didn't want to admit that they were in the wrong or that they had no idea what was happening). Noel was still in a bad mood when he left, so she ducked into a restaurant and pretended her plan had been to secretly buy him his favourite food all along.

They had eaten in silence, neither of them wanting to admit they had been deceiving the other, both of them worried that the smallest casual comment would let something slip out. After a while, the rest of their group had returned, multiple shopping bags under each arm. While Chisato and Precis were cheerful and Celine looked self-satisfied, Ashton looked exhausted and harrassed - he had ended up carrying most of the bags - and Claude was on the verge of despair at how much the party's communal funds had been depleted. Gyoro and Ururun had been forced into a new set of matching bows and ribbons, and an attempt had clearly been made to put lipstick on the tiny dragons, an event that possibly explained the scorch marks all over Precis' robot assistants. The mechanical twins in question were spinning around in circles and occasionally falling over, much to Leon's exasperation, as he had made the mistake of giving them his shopping bags to carry.

Rena wished she could join in the everyday chaos, and was grateful for the distraction that gave her a chance to escape the awkward situation with Noel, but she found that she couldn't get herself in the mood. As she gently pushed the dizzy robots aside so that Leon could retrieve what remained of his possessions, all she could think about was the look in that Psynard's eyes. She knew that true evil existed - she had faced it and slain it - but she had never really seen it in another person, and it was somehow even worse to have another living being see it inside herself.

It didn't make things any better that she had no idea why.


	2. Chapter 2

The second battle with the Ten Wise Men had gone about as well as the first.

Their attack on Fienal had been entirely futile. They had gotten through the gates, but only because the enemy had wanted them to. They had wanted to prove how utterly pointless their struggle was. Zaphkiel had come forwards to fight them, and their weapons hadn't even harmed the swordsman. By now, Rena had got the message that sending Zaphkiel to fight them was their way of mocking them, as they considered Zaphkiel to be the weakest of them, rather a joke by the standards of some of the greater Wise Men. They sent Zaphkiel on missions to deal with problems they considered to be a mild nuisance, something that the Wise Men with actual duties didn't want to waste their time on. 

They had seemed genuinely surprised to see her, though. And then their leader, Gabriel, had casually destroyed Claude's father, along with the spacecraft that he was the Captain of, as a show of power. She hadn't really been able to react at the time, what with the suddenness, the magnitude of it all. She still wasn't quite used to the fact that other worlds existed, that she was from one of these other worlds, never mind that there were forces in the Universe that could destroy entire worlds, could butcher more people in one strike than she could imagine existing, and that she was somehow supposed to stop these forces. It didn't help that Gabriel had just been frustrated at their idiocy, had almost acted as though he was trying to help them by demonstrating how ridiculous an idea it was to fight something whose power was on such a higher level than their own. She hadn't even let herself think about the fact that her homeworld was probably gone by now. That was beyond her capacity for emotion right now. It was almost surreal. 

She knew it was selfish of her not to be able to express anything at all when Claude had sunk to his knees in front of his enemy, but emotions were emotions. In the end, if they weren't there, you couldn't do anything about it.

And Haniel kept staring at her. She had been memorising their names, which Chisato had found out for her during the reporter's legally fuzzy investigations. The Wise Man in charge of civilian re-education had been trying to discreetly nudge Lucifer and whisper into his ear, while his superior officer glared at him and indicated that he should concentrate on what Gabriel was saying. An entire unspoken conversation had gone by while Gabriel made his speech, and from the number of times Haniel motioned with his head towards Rena, she was the topic of their interest. She saw Lucifer shrug and make an empty-handed gesture, then Marianna gave the order to retreat.

“They're probably wondering how you hijacked their teleport,” said Chisato, when Rena asked her in private. She wasn't sure why she didn't trust her friends, but her instincts told her that she didn't want the entire party knowing that the enemy was taking a sudden interest in her. She also wasn't sure why she trusted Chisato, of all people – the one friend of hers who had no concept of privacy or confidentiality. Maybe it was her anarchic streak, the way she understood that there were two sides to most stories, and that the authorities weren't necessarily in the right, that made Rena trust Chisato not to judge her even if there did turn out to be something wrong with her, “The teleport was probably keyed specifically to them. The security must have been very high. If I was them, I wouldn't want anyone accidentally intercepting their teleports and sneaking into their base. It probably scared the heck out of them!”

“But we already found it was because of the Quad... Quad...” she frowned.

“Quadratic Key,” supplied Chisato.

“... Yeah, that thing. And they knew we had it, so why is it bothering them so much?”

“They seemed really surprised we had one, though.”

“I thought they said it was normal for a Nedian to have one! True, I haven't exactly seen people carry them around in the street, but... why is it that big of a deal to everyone that I'm Nedian? Everyone else here is Nedian and they can't fight the Ten Wise Men! Nobody outside Nede can fight them either!”

“Rena, are you giving up?”

“Of course not! I just think we'd be able to win if we understood the situation better. We don't really know what we're doing right now. And all I ever seem to learn is that I'm not the same as other Nedians. Nobody was looking at Noel that way!”

“Well, I wouldn't exactly use Noel as the prime example of a perfectly normal Nedian. But I'll try and find out what I can,” promised Chisato, “And I won't tell the others either. Although, I don't understand why you keep being so secretive. And not just asking me for favours like this, I can tell when you're keeping things from me as well!”

“I'm just scared,” said Rena. 

Scared, and the memories of their accidental journey to Energy Nede were returning to her. The memories hadn't been pleasant. Mostly, they had been confusing and disorientating. Everything had been swirling around her, then she was in darkness without end, then there had been the sensation of falling, or of flying, except with no control, of being hurtled somewhere to land far away, through a place where time and direction didn't exist while words she didn't understand flashed through her vision and cried out urgently that something was wrong. 

When she woke up, she discovered that she hadn't even been the worst affected. Everyone else had thrown up, or had a migraine, or had felt like their body was being pulled apart, as though they were forcing themselves through a brick wall. The lights had been red, and the alarms had been screaming at them to leave. It had only been by following her, by thinking of her and belonging with her, that they had been able to stop themselves being flung wildly through the void, to be lost somewhere in the Universe.

Claude had complained about something called teleport sickness and the dangers of unauthorised teleporting, and had used words like hitchhiking and redirection. He had warned her of some of the things that the security measures on the teleport system could have done to them. She hadn't understood half the words he used, and his lurid descriptions were making her feel sick, so she had ignored them and quickly forgotten most of the conversation.

But she hadn't forgotten that the mechanical voices in the darkness had known her name.

“Well, you don't need to hide things from your friends! Even me!” said Chisato, “I won't publish anything you don't want me to even if it's really lurid and steamy... hey, I've got an idea!” the journalist snapped her fingers, “Maybe if we find out how you can intercept their teleportation, we can really weaponise it! We won't need to go under the ocean every time we want to go near Phynal, and we could even teleport straight into Gabriel's office and take him out while he's not expecting us!” 

“Um, I'm not sure that'll solve all our problems, but it's certainly something to look into!” said Rena.

“See, you gotta keep your morale up!” said Chisato, already running off to do whatever it is she did when she unleashed her nefarious reporter tricks upon the world.


	3. Chapter 3

As usual, Chisato had known what was happening before anyone else did, including the people who were supposed to be making it happen. Today she mysteriously found out that they were going to the Symbological Weapons Laboratory.

“The Mayor wrangled you permission,” explained the reporter, as they chatted in the waiting area of the Nede Chronicle office, “He doesn't know it yet, but our sources found out that the authorisation came through. I've been waiting for a way to get in there for years! It's the perfect time to carry out some proper investigation into the Ten Wise Men!”

“Um, so, did you find out anything else about what I asked you for?”

Chisato shook her head, “Nothing new since the collaboration with the academics in Princebridge. Although, I have a few theories. For instance, I think there might still be something left over in the Weapons Laboratory that was used in the construction of the Ten Wise Men project.”

“Some of the weapons they use, you mean? I'd have thought all that would have been destroyed!”

“They already got hold of a Symbol of Annihilation, of all things, and you even escaped from Nede altogether with a Quadratic Key. I'm not convinced these places are all that secure,” she said, “Plus, there must have been other prototype models of the Ten Wise Men, other tests done on them, maybe even some that were unused or only introduced at the last minute like Gabriel. They probably passed through the Weapons Laboratory at some point, if only to have their weapons tested.”

“I want to take a look through the records myself, before the Mayor gets hold of them. As you say, records like those are probably going to be destroyed as a security procedure,” continued Chisato, “I promise I won't jeopardise the primary mission. If I find something that'll tell us their weak points, I'll hand it over straight away. I just want to make sure no other interesting information gets lost.”

“Why are you telling me all this instead of sneaking off by yourself like you do every single other time? Do you think you might find something relevant to my questions?” asked Rena. She suddenly put a hand to her mouth, realising that she was starting to sound rude. For some reason, the conversation topic made her more irritable, less able to keep the self-control she always maintained.

“Well, to be frank, I need your help. The Weapons Laboratory is going to be a lot more secure than the places I normally sneak into, and the Mayor will have people watching me closely. I need you to distract him, to give me an opportunity to escape from the group. Do you think you can do that on my signal? I'll bring the news back to you first.”

“Oh... sure!” Rena smiled, but inwardly she sighed and shook her head. One day, that reporter was going to poke her nose into the wrong thing at the wrong time, slip up and get them all in serious trouble. Knowing Rena, she would probably have been the one to accidentally request it.

* * *

As it happened, the Mayor seemed more interested in talking to Rena than keeping an eye on Chisato. Amidst the ruins of the million-year-old facility, they quickly found the correct key card and placed it into the central research archive computer. As it came online for the first time in aeons, the Mayor looked through the archive of recordings until he found a certain point in time, and they watched in silence as the segment of security camera footage begin to play.

At least this time, Rena understood why she was the centre of attention.

After finding out the identity of her biological mother – and watching the final moments of her life, saving Rena from the same fate with her last act – she fled from the facility, too choked up with conflicting emotions to face the reactions of the others. She hid under a tree. The first time she saw that giant, ancient tree, she hadn't understood why it calmed her so much just to sit under its branches. She had assumed it was just the sheltering, life-giving nature of trees in general she liked. Now she understood that it was familiarity, maybe a few distant memories, bringing back the feeling that she was home and that someone was watching out for her. This tree was probably the only thing approaching old enough to have seen the time period she was from. This facility had been like a home to her, this forest the place she played while her mother was working. These trees, the feel of the wind, the grass beneath her feet, they were part of her homeland, her native planet, the Nede she felt as though she was born to be a part of...

It was only when she woke up on her back, staring up at the soft sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves, that she realised that something had overwhelmed her mind and made her faint. Anyone would have found the news difficult to cope with, but she knew it hadn't just been an emotional reaction. A flood of information, of sensations she didn't quite understand how to process, had washed through her mind. It was as though something more than just familiarity was connecting her to Nede, and when she thought of the old Nede, the one that must have looked entirely like this rather than a few protected reservations, she felt some kind of yearning, an urge to return to some task she had been cut off from.

Then Claude was looking up at her, a mixture of mild amusement and gentle concern on his face. He helped her up, sat beside her at the foot of the old guardian tree, and they soon found themselves in each other's arms. By that point, she didn't care about the strangeness of her thoughts, that they were different from the simple memories of a small child, she could only think about Claude's smell and how gentle his embrace was as he muttered some reassuring words. She wished the moment could have lasted longer. Inevitably, the rest of the party soon caught up with them and the Mayor declared that it was time to leave before the Ten Wise Men trashed the place in their absence. 

Chisato hung back, gesturing at Rena to stay behind as well. Then she slipped behind a tree. Rena made some excuse about wanting to say a final goodbye on her own, then she followed the reporter. Nobody had even noticed Chisato was gone, but then, she never did say all that much, what with always being busy holding the camera. 

Rena hadn't noticed Noel was missing either, until she reached the sparking, dust-covered computer terminal that Chisato was leading her to. The zoologist stood waiting for them, his eternally vague face looking surprisingly worried and his hairy feline ears wilting. 

“I'm sorry about the sudden bad news,” said Chisato, walking up to the computer with no regard for health and safety protocols, “And I'm sorry I just can't leave it at that.”

“Is there something else I wasn't told?” demanded Rena, “I thought it was a little odd that the Mayor 'just happened' to discover that exact footage at the same time that I was there to watch!”

“He certainly knew about it all along. What's more, he was deliberately not telling the whole story. I imagine his motives were purely that of prudence, rather than any malice, but there is more to that story,” said Chisato, “Don't worry, Rhima was definitely your biological mother, but that wasn't the extent of your involvement in that laboratory. Or do you think that small children are always allowed to wander around dangerous weapons laboratories, even if there are nice woods to play in outside?”

“What are you saying?” asked Rena, glaring first at Chisato, then at Noel. The zoologist visibly shrank under her gaze, then Chisato hit a key on the old terminal.


	4. Chapter 4

The young Rena was happily playing with a pen full of miniature Bunnies. For a research laboratory, the animals looked very well cared for and had a comfortable amount of living space. One of the Bunnies was curled up in her arms, making that indistinct blob shape that they were so good at. She frowned in concentration and inspected it, then placed her palm gently on its flank. Pale blue light shone around her hand and the Bunny shuddered, jerked its head up, sniffed her hand, then scampered off to the other side of the pen.

“Very good, Rena, I think they're all going to be fine now,” said the laboratory assistant who supervised the little girl. She beamed at him, “I think the canteen's open. Why don't you buy a snack?”

“Yay, snack!” declared the child, grabbing the credit chip. She carefully locked the gate behind her as she left the Bunny pen, then her limited self-control abandoned her and she sprinted down the corridor.

“Remiel's certainly improving,” said the scientist, “I'd say she already shows the raw power to equal Raphael with a little training on technique.”

“She shows an actual healers' personality as well. She even takes care of Bunny that bites everyone. I don't think there'll be a repeat of the usual problem.”

“If my notes are correct, Lucifer won't heal anyone but himself, Michael only cares about himself and Haniel, and Raphael's powers are too weak to be an effective medic for the entire group.”

“The idea was for the four of them to collectively be enough, but they won't co-operate well enough with each other, especially the leader,” continued the scientist, “We need a purpose built medic if they're going to survive. Well, we also need them to stop their constant in-fighting, but that's another department's problem.”

“I hope the other Ten will take to her,” said the assistant, “Her personality doesn't seem compatible with their general outlook on life, somehow.”

“I don't think you really understand the Ten. They're people, not robots. Even Jophiel. You can't predict how their personalities will turn out, no matter how much you control their environment. You can only condition them to follow their base orders and see how they develop. It makes them a little hard to handle, but at least they can show some initiative in battle. Hopefully, if we limit the amount of destructive symbology we program her genes with to the bare minimum for survival, we'll minimise the risk that it'll negatively affect her personality. We're supposed to be creating soldiers loyal to Nede, not homicidal maniacs.”

“Well, if you want to raise her properly, why don't you encourage Rhima to do things with her outside the lab? A loving mother is all well and good, but she also needs a normal home life.”

“What do you know about raising kids, hm? This is normal life for a lot of children. She needs a realistic upbringing, not some kind of idealised life!”

The pair of young adults in labcoats casually arguing over her future was too much for Rena. Noel spotted that she had begun to tear up, and paused the video for her.

“How can this even be true?” she demanded, “My mother was alive seven million years ago. The Ten Wise Men were created billions of years ago!”

“Rena, I'm sorry, but the date on the other video was falsified. The Laboratory has had multiple catastrophic accidents caused by creation energy. It's been rebuilt four times! Well, five times, but one was because of a fire. The recording was of the fourth, but you lost your mother in the first accident,” said Chisato, “Notice that the footage of your mother talking to you has no date. It was highly confidential, so it was filed under extra protection.”

“The Nede Government wouldn't want any information about the Eleventh Wise Man getting out,” said Rena, “Why are they called the Ten Wise Men if there are eleven of us and I'm a woman?”

“You were never instituted properly as a Wise Man, except for a few test runs. You were lost in the accident during the early stages of your genetic programming,” said Noel, “Besides, I think they call themselves Sages.”

“You know about this, Noel? Didn't you say you had worked for the Ten Wise Men? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I was really hoping it would never be necessary. I'm not very good at defusing this kind of social situation. I mean, the only people I ever get on well with were animals,” his ears drooped even further, “If I understood people better, I'd have known what kind of bad news the Ten Wise Men were. I don't mean you, though!”

“Just be quiet, Noel,” Chisato sighed. Noel finally stopped looking as though he was about to have a panic attack, “It all makes sense now. The weird reaction of the Psynards. They must have seen that you had latent Wise Man DNA. It explains how you intercepted their teleport, if it was just a blanket teleport for every Wise Man. And why Haniel recognised you...”

“You probably don't remember it, but he's seen you once before. The laboratory wanted to look at Michael's DNA to try and introduce higher levels of healing symbology into your DNA, and Haniel came along to make sure Michael didn't burn the place down again,” explained Noel.

“And why I feel so connected to Nede. In their own way, the Ten Wise Men were expected to be more loyal to Nede than any other Nedian. They just lost their way,” said Rena, “Oh, Tria. I'm sympathising with them! Chisato... am I going to be a danger to the party?”

“What? Of course not! You're still Rena!”

“But I was a prototype! I was never finished! How do you know for certain what I'm going to turn into?” said Rena, her voice lifting an octave, “Gabriel was a prototype, Chisato!”

“Gabriel was a prototype despotic leader. You're a prototype medic,” Chisato pointed out, “But that's beside the point. You're clearly not under Gabriel's control. You were probably shut down so far before he was woken up, he just forgot you existed and didn't bother trying to turn you. You're not going to turn into a monster, any more than the other Wise Men are suddenly going to turn into responsible citizens again.”

“I promise that's not how Wise Men work,” said Noel, “You probably just sympathise with them because, well, they're still people, and you're a caring person who thinks about others. And you might vaguely remember some of them from the past. That's all.”

“I wonder if they remember me,” said Rena.

“I really wouldn't be able to tell you something like that,” said Noel, “I wasn't ever close enough to the Wise Men that they actually spoke to me. I wasn't any better at talking to them than I am to sane people. I just heard some rumours every now and then. I had only heard of Remiel because they let me monitor the wildlife in their forested area sometimes.” 

“If you really want to talk to someone who can put your mind at ease,” said Chisato, ignoring Noel's awkward laughter as he realised that nobody appreciated his attempt at humour, “There's a chance that I can arrange for you to meet up with a certain individual. It's going to be risky, though.”


	5. Chapter 5

They returned to Central City after that, so that they could escort the Mayor home and Chisato could return to her office and tell the Producer what she had discovered so far. It was convenient that she was waiting for them in the lobby of the City Hall. She wore a hooded cape and a long, billowing dress to hide her appearance but Rena remembered her from the last time she saw the woman, on Expel. Her expression wasn't hidden, a deep loneliness, grief and dread that caused a shudder to run down Rena's spine. It was impossible for her to have traveled to Energy Nede from Expel – she certainly hadn't been standing on the top floor of Eluria Tower when Rena accidentally intercepted the Ten Wise Men in their teleport – and the very fact that they were standing in the same room now was somehow unnerving to Rena. Her last appearance preceded an earthquake and a flood that she accurately predicted. It was no malice on the woman's part, she knew, but something told Rena that it was no coincidence that she was here again, just when the Ten Wise Men were loose. The atmosphere felt even more like an impending Apocalypse than usual and she hadn't even said anything yet. That same connection to Nede, the remnants of the part of her that was Remiel, was telling Rena that there would be very bad consequences to this meeting.

“Rena, this is the woman I was talking about,” said Chisato, “I've booked a soundproof booth in the studio for you two to have a private conversation.”

The woman looked bemused for a second, then her eyes met Rena's and she frowned. She agreed to follow the two of them upstairs to the Studio on the next floor, and through the crowded, busy room full of people yelling at computers and each other, into a small side room that resembled the eye of a storm of organised chaos. Chisato stayed in the room with them, apparently not understanding the definition of a private conversation.

“This is Philia,” explained the reporter, “Philia, this is Rena.”

“I've heard that name before,” said Rena.

“Philia is the name of Dr. Lantis' daughter.”

“The creator of the Ten Wise Men?”

“It must all be very confusing for you, but I'm the same person,” said the woman in a sad voice that sounded very distant, as if she wasn't really there, “I'm not alive, of course, but father made a back-up of my personality.”

“I think I saw something like that on the records. But what are you doing here? What were you doing on Expel?”

“Philia's bond with the creator of the Ten Wise Men, and Gabriel, gives her the same kind of access to their teleport facility as you,” explained Chisato, “She's been waiting for an opportunity to talk to you for a long time, but Gabriel has been causing her a lot of trouble. I thought it might be appropriate for the two of you to talk, seeing as you're in the same situation.”

“The same situation?” Rena frowned at Philia, still confused.

“We're both innocent people who can't help having some kind of strong connection with the Ten Wise Men,” explained Philia, “Remiel, I've heard about you, somehow I knew you were there, but I never did find out what you looked like. I'm happy to find out you aren't a bad person.”

“I don't understand what you wanted to see me for. I don't know what I can do about any of this,” admitted Rena.

“I need you to live. You must survive the final battle. I don't have a choice. I have nowhere to go, I'm so integral to the system, to the evil things my father has done. There won't even be a me left, so I'll probably just fade away. You'll be all that's left of us, the only thing left to show that we ever existed,” said Philia.

“I think I understand,” replied Rena, “But I can't accept that you'll just die. If I can, I'll find a way to save you. I promise.”

“You really are everything I heard about Remiel. I don't want you to pretend that part of you doesn't exist, okay? Even if you're worried you'll fall into evil. You won't, and it's not worth losing a part of your identity over. You'll be representing all of us, as well. A people who were once alive, and were close to each other, and achieved great things together.” 

“I wish I could imagine the old Nede,” said Rena, “I can barely believe that something like Energy Nede exists when it's right in front of me.”

“I'm not talking about Nede,” said Philia, “It wasn't always like this, every single second of the day. Please understand that. And even now, I've had the chance to be with my father and he's been able to see his daughter, even if it's just an illusion.”

“I'll do my best,” promised Rena.

Suddenly, the woman looked even paler than usual, a pained look on her face, her breathing laboured. Rena instinctively drew upon her strongest healing magic but Philia waved her away sharply, “It won't work. Don't waste your strength. Remiel, I'm sorry... I think I've done a very bad thing. I've failed in another task I set out to do.”

“What is it? Can we do it for you?”

She shook her head again, “I can't stay. He's found me out. I'm not supposed to leave, you see. Remiel, I'm afraid it's going to be a lot harder than you...”

A look of agony distorted her features and she let out a drawn-out scream of fundamental agony. Before Rena's eyes, the woman's image began to break up into interference until nothing but a few pixel-motes were left over, scattering to the floor like the ashes of someone incinerated alive. 

“They deleted her,” said Chisato, horrified.

“What was she about to say?”

“I'm afraid I have no idea,” admitted the reporter, “That shouldn't have happened. This place is hacker-proof.” 

“Can she come back?”

“No, Rena, she was a computer program, and she's deleted. That means she's gone.”

Rena felt sick. They left the room in silence, the kind of tangible silence that dampened the atmosphere of the entire Studio. Nobody could bring themselves to ask the usual million and one questions as they walked out and rejoined the party.

Later on that day, one of the cleaners found something that had been left in the interview room, so they sent someone to run and deliver it to Chisato. It was a memory chip in the shape of a teardrop-like jewel. Written in elegant handwriting on the side of the chip was the name 'Israfel'. The reporter didn't know what it was for and saw no way of attaching it to any computer she had ever used, so she gave it to Celine, who she knew liked pretty jewels. Celine thought it was ugly and cheap, so she gave it to Rena, where it ended up in her pocket.


	6. Chapter 6

The battle with the Ten Wise Men happened before they planned, when three of them ambushed a simulator training exercise. Raphael's intelligence network had somehow found out they had obtained weapons capable of fighting the Ten, so he had sent out assassins to take them out before they became too much of a problem. After a gruelling battle, Rena and her party took the fight to the Tower, where things got worse. Raphael, along with Camael and Zadkiel, was waiting for them at the gates and Rena's band was forced to fight all three at once. Despite Raphael being able to mysteriously eat people and Zadkiel owning some kind of tuning fork of death, the battle went surprisingly smoothly. Claude commented that they were more of an intelligence unit than a purpose-built combat unit, and that they should expect a lot more trouble on the upper floors. After all, they wouldn't have survived the fight with Zaphkiel, Metatron and Jophiel if the three had been even vaguely co-ordinated. At his recommendation, they retreated and resupplied before heading up to the fifth floor to deal with the two unit's notorious commanders, Haniel and Michael.

They almost died several times in that battle, and Rena would never forget Michael's screeching voice as the deranged man launched himself at them like the living strategic weapon he was designed as, setting the entire room ablaze in the process, while Haniel suddenly appeared behind them from somewhere beyond the hellish pillars of flame and gouts of choking smoke, firing cybernetically augmented psychic blasts that petrified anyone they touched. At one point, Claude, Ashton and Celine had all been petrified by a particularly well-aimed shot and Michael was chasing Rena around the room, cackling like a man possessed. By sheer luck, she had managed to hide behind a collapsed section of the ceiling that Michael had accidentally destroyed in his fervor, then had enough time to throw a few recovery spells across the room before the heat overwhelmed her. When she next regained consciousness, Michael was on the floor, his fires burning low and his cybernetic parts sparking, while Haniel darted around the room firing lasers at them to lure them away from his fallen comrade. Eventually, both of them went down, and that was when everything went black.


	7. Chapter 7

At first, Rena assumed she had collapsed from her wounds again. Noel had been held back from the fight for this exact possibility, so she hoped his healing magic was strong to revive her. Then she began hearing the voices. Indistinct and distorted, fading in and out, it was like overhearing something in the next room while she was half-asleep. It didn't feel as though there rooms where she was, however. She knew she wasn't with the others in the fifth floor atrium of Phynal any more. The voices grew louder and more frantic, some of them clearly in pain, interspersed with thumping and glass cracking under the weight of someone beating on it, except for one voice that remained mechanically calm. One of the voices grew loud enough for her to recognise it clearly, and it spurred her to regain control of her body so she could jump up and run. She wanted to leave, but she didn't know how, or even if it was possible, so she ran towards them, trying to keep to the shadows in a realm that was mostly blackness anyway.

In the centre of the void was a gigantic circular mechanical device that looked like a gate or door of some kind, and inside it was a roiling maelstrom of utter madness, a surging storm of unfettered symbological force. A strong shielding spell covered the portal, and Michael appeared to be trying to tear it apart with his bare hands while screeching some very colourful and imaginative suggestions for things that he thought should happen to both the mechanical voice emanating from the portal and his commanding officer, Lucifer. Lots of the suggestions involved fire in various intimate ways. He still looked badly in need of repair. Haniel looked even more furious than usual, and was trying to attack the barrier more precisely by firing lasers at its weak points. The intelligence team were there too, and they were trying to hack the mechanism holding the barrier in place.

“I apologise for the inconvenience, but your request for emergency teleportation has been denied by a higher security level. Phynal Tower is currently under lockdown,” said the mechanical voice.

“Do you not understand that this lockdown is killing us? I couldn't go and fetch Haniel earlier when we were attacked, the barrier hasn't been letting Michael's team back inside, and now we can't retreat from battle,” demanded Camael.

“I apologise for the...” the voice suddenly crackled with static and emitted a stream of nonsense words as Jibril and Zadkiel succeeded in hacking it. The barrier flickered for a moment, causing Michael to unceremoniously stumble through and fall flat on his face.

“Haniel, don't leave me!” he screamed.

“Michael, I want you to walk towards the mechanism and press a sequence of keys on it. Press them, don't smash or immolate them, understand?” his partner replied.

The machine responded by electrocuting Michael, causing him to bellow a curse and forget his instructions. Rena closed her eyes and sighed. She understood what had happened, now. She had somehow been picked up by this attempt to teleport. Why she hadn't been affected by the other six as they tried to escape, she had no idea, she assumed that it was either because she ranked higher than them but not higher than Michael and Haniel, or because the wording of their particular teleport request had included her. Or maybe they were just putting more energy into theirs, enough to drag her along with them even though they weren't even authorised to teleport at all. She had no idea how she was going to stop this happening, or how she was going to leave here alive. They were going to discover her presence eventually, and they looked too angry to be interested in negotiations. She considered offering them healing in exchange for safe passage, but she was worried they would just return to Phynal and try to murder them again if she healed them. Or, worse, they might abduct her, once they figured out that it was possible. No, she needed to leave this place as soon as possible.

She collected together every mote of her inner strength and focussed it into a single effort of will, while looking around for anything that vaguely resembled an exit from this purgatory dimension. Teleportation magic was something she knew next to nothing about. For that matter, she had never seen Celine, Leon or Noel use symbology to travel anywhere. All she had were a few vague descriptions in the textbooks that they had shown her. Even if she saw an exit, it wouldn't necessarily lead her anywhere better, unless she put effort into willing it to send her to the rest of the party. She tried to build a mental image of the room she had been in, of the faces of the people she desperately wanted to return to. 

“No lagging behind, old man...” began Haniel, turning to glare at Camael. Then his eyebrows raised and he stared directly at Rena. She froze in place, aware that she had been spotted and there was nowhere to run to. All she could do was pour more of her mental resources into what she hoped was actually a valid teleportation spell. She watched in some kind of awful slow motion as Haniel strode towards her. Michael yelled something at him and he turned to call back a slightly annoyed reply, pointing at her. Suddenly, the attention of the entire room was turned to her.

Then her senses were filled with roaring static and white noise. Broken vestiges of a voice could be heard somewhere inside the chaos, and a single point of light coalesced in its centre. The light flared brighter, the whirring, thumping noise unbearably loud. 

Noel yelped and jumped backwards as she screamed and sat bolt upright. Something was digging into her right hand, which she had clenched so tightly her knuckles hurt. She looked down at what she had been holding to discover the chip marked 'Israfel'. With her usual complete disregard for privacy, Chisato immediately peered over her shoulder to have a look.

“The red light flashing on it means the data isn't readable any more,” she commented, “If you had important work saved on there, I could try and retrieve it for you, but...”

“Never mind Rena's computer thing! How is her health? Rena, are you feeling okay now?” demanded Claude.

“She doesn't need any more healing,” said Noel, his voice still shaky.

“I'm fine,” confirmed Rena, “How long did I disappear for?”

“We were bored, so we killed Lucifer for you,” said Noel, yawning and stretching, “He was easy compared to those two freaks! I don't really get why he was left guarding a room on his own.”

“I'm sure the freaks would agree with you,” said Rena, with a nervous laugh. 

After organising the excursion party to switch around, led by Noel and Leon, so they could provide a forward scout to their expedition into the final floors, Chisato took Rena to one side and asked her what had really happened.

“Was it the teleport thing again?” demanded the reporter. Rena nodded a little gingerly.

“To be honest, I can't tell you if they got out or not,” she replied.

“Well, we can mop up the mess later. The important thing is defeating Gabriel and stopping him from destroying the Universe. If we deactivate the Crest for good, they can't do all that much damage. They're scattered, leaderless and some of them are wounded,” said Chisato, “I was mostly just worried about you.”

“Well, if we have any luck, this'll be over very soon,” said Rena, “There's only Gabriel left.”

“We mustn't underestimate him, though! He's a prototype who was added to the system at the last minute, so I can't find any information on his archives. Even though the next Wise Man hasn't necessarily always been more powerful than the last, there's nothing quite as dangerous as a complete unknown.”

“You know, you're right. I do kind of have a bad feeling about the next battle,” said Rena, “I'm not sure I can put a finger on it, but something feels wrong.”

“Maybe it's some kind of memory from your past experiences as Remiel,” said Chisato, “You should pay more attention to flashes of instinct like this. At the very least, it could be an indication of latent oracular potential. Talents like this can manifest at any time!”

“Okay, I'll warn Claude. Maybe we should resupply again, get in a little more training on the way.”

As it turned out, it wasn't enough. It wasn't anywhere near enough, and whatever they did, it still wouldn't have been.

What they walked into was Death incarnate.


	8. Chapter 8

Gabriel had known that Philia had met with them, and that she had betrayed him. He had been the one to delete her personality from the system, and the process had finally removed whatever sanity he had remaining. His voice sounded like as much of a broken machine as Philia as he threw himself at the party, attacking with a speed beyond anything Rena's eyes could track and the strength of a demon. Waves of energy emanated from him, preventing them from getting close to him as he rained down symbological forces as powerful as the aspects of nature itself that they called upon. Rena threw a Star Flare at him to distract him, giving Claude and Ashton the chance to trap him in a corner. For a moment it looked as though they could deal with him but she realised how powerful the life force emanating from him was, tangible, oppressive in its unnatural vastness. A quick scan confirmed that his life energy was almost off the scale. Gabriel was not only more powerful than his subordinates, he was on an entirely different magnitude of power. The feeling of dread she had experienced before coming into the room had increased to an overpowering sensation of utter wrongness, as though she had done something terrible that had doomed them all. 

“Remiel,” Gabriel beckoned to her, his voice strangely calm, although she could sense the insanity that the angelic voice masked. She ducked her head out from the computer terminal she had been hiding behind. She had guessed that whatever she had done wrong, it was to do with meeting Philia earlier, and while she didn't really understand how the machines worked, she understood that they were integral to the Wise Men and their attempts to annihilate the Universe. Maybe if she hid behind them, at the very least Gabriel would try to avoid hitting them, and maybe she could even cause them to become damaged in the battle. Her vision obscured, she hadn't realised that everyone else was gone. The battlefield had fallen silent. She reached into her belt pouch for another Resurrection Elixir and her heart sank as she realised they were running out. They hadn't even made a scratch on him. She collected her will and hoped that she could finish incanting the rites of a revival ritual before Gabriel finally decided to stop talking to her and finish her off.

“Remiel, this is foolishness,” he told her, almost like a teacher admonishing a pupil, “It isn't what you were meant for! Why are you wasting your life on a losing battle? You are the only one I can bring myself to forgive!”

“Don't you dare pretend you're going to spare me! You already said you don't care about the other nine! Why would you care about me?”

“I don't need you to win, but you don't need to die needlessly. It wasn't me who betrayed you, it was Lucifer.”

“Liar! They still can't teleport away!”

“You think I should just let the others desert me? It wasn't my decision anyway, it was Lucifer's. I don't have time to focus on matters I'm supposed to be able to trust Lucifer enough to delegate to him.”

“You're going to destroy the Universe anyway!”

“You still think this Universe is worthy of existence? The Universe that took Philia away from us?”

“You're the one who deleted Philia!”

“Because she was tainted! Corrupted by the outside world! The real Philia would never have betrayed me! I should have realised it was never her to begin with,” said Gabriel, peering towards the terminal with a look of fury and bitter regret. That must have been where he deleted the stored personality of his daughter, realised Rena. She followed his gaze and saw that the names of all the Wise Men were displayed on the terminal. All of them were offline, some were confirmed destroyed, some had gone out of range, others were completely unknown. And there was an eleventh entry – labelled 'Israfel' that was marked 'deleted by root user'. Underneath these words was a further message blinking in red - 'WARNING: an emergency deletion is not a clean formatting, files may still present a security risk'. 

The tear-shaped memory stick was still clutched in her hand. It had become something of a talisman in a time when she knew she needed as much good luck as she could muster. For a moment, she thought she felt it vibrate, as if responding to something. Rena ran towards the terminal and jammed the storage device into a port that looked as though it fit, as she had seen Chisato do with her laptop. 

Pain washed through her entire body as a Star Flare hit her. Coughing up blood, she forced herself to steady her hand on the terminal, no matter how much she wanted to collapse. She had no time or spare energy to heal herself. Gabriel darted towards her, energy waves emanating from him in every direction.

Mouthing a silent prayer to Tria, she poured all the collected healing energy she was going to use for reviving the party straight into the Israfel Tear. Please work, she begged, this is what I was built for. Healing all types of people imaginable, from every world in the galaxy, no matter if they were entirely alien to her. Even healing the Ten Wise Men. She could bring someone who was made of machine code back to life. She had to be able to...

She fell into the storm of white noise again, but she didn't let herself be dragged under by it, didn't lose her concentration. She thought about Philia's face, her personality, about healing in general, wholeness and sanity and life. She imagined the crackling noises turning back into Philia's voice, the wild surges of energy being shaped back into the woman's sad, dignified features. She grabbed hold of every stray mote and held it together until it merged back into place, like she would mend flesh or repair a broken bone. 

She called Philia's name.

What felt like hours passed, and Rena was exhausted. She had forgotten about the battle, that Gabriel had been about to kill her. It didn't occur to her that she couldn't have survived if it was taking her this long, she shouldn't still be here now. It didn't matter – all she cared about was her patient. She didn't allow herself to rest until she heard a reply to her calls, one that actually sounded like Philia's voice rather than the whispers of the tortured digital phantoms that swept around her in a dervish.

“Remiel,” said Philia, staring out over the empty black expanse, “I'm sorry. You're wasting time. You still won't survive. You're too late.”

“We can't survive anyway.”

Philia walked forward, intently staring at something. Rena followed her gaze and saw the teleportation device. The force field had been completely torn apart, its edges sparking. The device itself had taken a battering, although it still hummed with life, the dark purple swirl of energy inside it roiling and crackling angrily. Rena was no expert, but it didn't look very stable to her.

“Did they get away in the end?” she asked.

“I don't know,” said Philia, “But I'll never be able to follow them. They wouldn't want me there anyway.”

“Did you used to be their friends?”

“Father didn't like me going near them, and Gabriel never let me off the top floor. Raphael knew how to hack the security system, though, so I had some... interesting messages left for me sometimes. I can only assume the really interesting ones were from Michael,” Philia shook her head, “I don't suppose I can go back to that time, though. All I can do is try and help you in your battle. I'll do my best to limit Gabriel's power again, but he's probably ready for it.”

“I need to help the others, now. Can I leave this place? Will I still be alive when I wake up?” she asked.

“Don't worry about that. Time doesn't pass normally in a virtual environment, and you'd know about it if your body died while you were here. Just will yourself to leave, and you should be able to exit the program. I'll be right behind you,” said Philia.

When Rena woke up, Gabriel was on his knees, clutching his head and screaming. His beautiful wavy red hair was matted. Above his head, the image of Philia could be seen overlapping his own. On her back was a pair of ethereal blue angel wings. His voice also sounded as though Philia's voice spoke over the top of it, like he was being possessed by her. Rena didn't wait to see what would happen next, but threw one of the remaining Resurrection Elixirs at Claude. The swordsman stood up, wincing in pain, then let out a battle cry and rushed the distracted Wise Man. Soon she had revived Ashton and Celine as well. It would be a close fight, they were still battle-weary and their morale sapped by the ordeal, but now they at least had a chance.


	9. Chapter 9

**Epilogue:**

“So, this is the planet we're going to?” asked Rena, staring at the star map and the planet outlined by a blue box that marked it as their destination. The information that scrolled next to the blue box told her that it was fertile, could support intelligent life, was slightly larger than Earth and that there was a known underdeveloped civilisation inhabiting it last time the records were updated. No matter how many times she saw the map, or the observation bay that gave her a view into space, it never became old. She still marveled at how enormous and beautiful it was, how there was so much variety that she would never be able to even imagine what she was going to find next. When she told Claude about this, he laughed and said that it still wouldn't get old when they were both grizzled veterans with a flock of annoying rookies to take care of, and that it was the same for everyone in the Federation.

“We can't just beam down there straight away,” he said, “This planet's potentially very dangerous. We were sent here to investigate anomalies that were out of place with the natural cycle of the planet. The Federation suspects tampering by a third party. There were records of a similar thing happening to another planet, and it got very complicated!”

“Oh? What happened?”

“There turned out to be a biological weapon used on an underdeveloped civilisation by some very dangerous war criminals. This planet sounds like it was hit by the same plague,” said Claude, “And there's unusual amounts of volcanic activity as well. That's something new – the two problems have never been found on the same planet before!”

“A plague? Do we have enough protective equipment? I mean, I need to go down and help the people, but...”

“It's not the usual type of plague, Rena, it petrifies people. A couple of Amulets of Flexibility and we'll be fine,” he said, “Although, I thought this plague was infectious and petrified people over time. In this case, random people were just found petrified near the volcanoes. I think we might be dealing with a different strain, so we need to take extra precautions.”

“Volcanic activity and random petrification, hm?”

“I still say the Admiral shouldn't risk himself on a mission as dangerous as this, ma'am...” said the Security Officer.

“I'll go and talk to the Medical Officers,” said Rena. She didn't want to get involved with what would probably turn out to be a rather heated diplomatic situation. The rest of the Officers had been trying to persuade Claude to stop throwing himself personally into every single mission since he became Admiral. They had never managed to persuade him to even vaguely pay attention to them, and the discussions became more and more intense each time. She was within her rights to talk to him about it as Chief Medical Officer, on the grounds that it was a health risk, but it would be more appropriate to do so in private. Besides, she needed the long walk to the Medical Bay so she had some time relatively alone.

“I should have expected I wouldn't be able to see the back of you two so easily,” she sighed, slightly amused, “I suppose Israfel was right. I can't keep running away from that side of myself forever. How many of you are down there, anyway? Because if you're going to just wreck more planets...”

She jerked her hand back from the elevator's control panel as though it was about to explode. The small display screen that usually showed the face of the person who was trying to access it during security lockdowns, or a variety of error messages, had broken up into static, then gone dead. In place of the usual display was Raphael's face, the twin hovering points of light inside her green cowl impassively boring into Rena's eyes.

She sighed. At least it wasn't a plague.


End file.
